The Plan Page 36

  Or was it just giving him the finger?

  Chapter 69

  THE ASSAULT ON HERTZ CASTLE

  Ryan pulled the eighteen-wheeler to the curb on John Street. The two-block-long street was perpendicular to Broadway and the lighted entrance of UBC was aroun d t he corner and half a block up. Ryan shut down the engin e a nd got out of the cab, then knocked on the side of th e t ruck.

  Babbling John threw open the door and glared out at him. "You hadda hit every damn divot and pothole in the city? This is high-tech, delicate shit back here."

  "I'm gonna go help Cole and Naomi. We'll come down and open the fire door."

  "Don't forget this," John said as he handed Ryan a canvas bag full of tools he'd collected from the control center tool supply.

  Ryan moved to the front of the parking garage, where Cole was out of the SNG truck, examining the bar arm that required a parking key card to raise. He and Ryan selected two wrenches from the canvas bag and began to unscrew the bolts on the arm.

  Naomi was behind the wheel of the SNG truck and had pulled it up in front of the gate to help disguise what they were doing. Finally, the last bolt came off and they pulled the metal arm out of the bracket. Naomi pulled the truck into the parking structure while Cole and Ryan reattached the arm. Three minutes later they were standing on ground zero at Hertz Castle. A half-moon threw a shaft of light through the clouds on the empty parking stalls. The forty-foot UBC satellite dish pointed its "flow gun" into space, looking like a huge, discarded umbrella Ryan and Cole looked up through a hole in the clouds at the stars. Somewhere, twenty-four thousand miles out there, a five-foot transponder was speeding through space at several thousand miles an hour in a geosynchronous dance with the earth.

  If all went well, they would hit it in less than thirty minutes. . An electronic shot heard around the world.

  They had parked the satellite truck in a spot where it could be lined up in the same trajectory as the main uplink. The smaller dish was dwarfed by the ten-meter uplink.

  They went to work in silence. Cole unhooked the one-inch coaxial cable that was wound like a fire hose on a wheel on the back of the SNG truck. Cole opened the fire door on the roof, and, while Naomi made sure that the line didn't kink, Ryan grabbed the heavy two-inch plug and moved into the concrete-enclosed staircase. The metal stairs rang as he moved down, pulling the heavy cable after him. He was down two flights when his leg began to feel wobbly under him. He stopped for a minute to rest. The wounded leg seemed almost healed but sometimes the muscles didn't work right. It weakened at unpredictable times.

  "What's wrong?" Cole whispered down at him.

  "My leg. I'll be okay," he whispered back. He started down again, moving slower this time until he got to the fire door at ground level. "You better take a look at this," he called up to Cole, who came pounding down the red metal staircase to where Ryan was standing.

  "Some kinda alarm on the door." They looked at the pewter fire handle that opened the door.

  "Shit," Cole said. The control truck was ten feet away on the other side of the door, but they couldn't get to it without setting off the alarm. Cole looked at his watch; it was seventeen minutes to six. Ryan still had to get to the basement in the building half a block to the east. He had to get the exterior service door open, disable the shore power, and destroy the two backup generators-all in less than a quarter hour. They didn't have time to screw around with a fire door.

  "We gotta risk it," and, without waiting, Cole pushed it open. Immediately a bell started ringing somewhere in the parking complex.

  "Kaz, you're a shitty guardian angel," Cole said, ignoring the alarm, as he handed the cable to Babbling John, who hooked it into the side of the truck. John and Cole moved into the darkened control room, leaving Ryan outside.

  Inside the big truck's control room, John started to heat up the equipment. Cole sat in the director's chair while Babbling John looked at the monitors as, one by one, they lit up.

  "Okay, let's see if we can get a downlink," John said.

  He turned on the global positioning systems, which told him on a computer readout exactly where they were on earth, printing out the latitude and longitude. It also told him in what direction the dish on the roof was pointing and the axis of the trailer that it sat on. All of this information was stored in the computer. Then John punched in the Galaxy Four access code and the GPS interfaced with the satellite in space. The portable dish four floors above began to rotate, slowly changing its position, aiming its "flow feed" antenna at the satellite.

  On the roof, Naomi jumped as the little dish began to move beside her. She photographed it with her Nikon motor-drive while it first elevated then rotated to the east, looking for the UBC transponder on the Galaxy Four satellite. She could hear the alarm bell still ringing far below, but she tried not to let it bother her. Naomi Zhu had been trained in covert operations. She knew nothing ever went the way it was planned. Half of being good at fieldwork was being able to improvise.

  In the control room, John Baily was waiting for the dish on the roof to access the satellite. He was looking for the UBC signal so he could pull it in on a downlink-none of which could be traced. The ATIS only registered when they transmitted. Once he had the network feed, he would make minor manual adjustments to get rid of electronic noise. Once he'd cleaned up the signal, he would have the same images on his five monitors in the truck that the Sunday crew in the Rim control room had on their monitors. Then he and Cole heard the three electronic beeps that told them that the GPS had found the transponder on Galaxy Four. A few seconds later, the typed words they were both waiting for appeared on the main line monitor: "Satellite Acquired," it said in white block letters at the bottom of the screen. In seconds, they were watching the Game of the Week postgame show from the Jets locker room. Akmad Rashad was interviewing a defensive back named Calvin Hobbs: "We was just getting good reads and tryin' to keep interior containment. . It was a team effort," Hobbs said, grinning on all five monitors.

  Ryan and Lucinda had fifteen minutes to get the rest of the job done. They had gone over the plans earlier that afternoon with John and Cole.

  Babbling John had been hunched over his schematic drawings in the dimly lit control room at the Truck Mart. He showed them where the exterior door at UBC would be located. It would be locked. "But," he said, "I still got the key. Assholes forgot t' take it from me."

  He had pulled his heavy ring out off his belt. Why, Ryan wondered silently, did X-over-Y geeks always carry fifty keys on giant key rings attached to their belts? One of life's mysteries.

  John removed a key and handed it to Ryan. "I can't guarantee they didn't change the locks on this door, but knowing them guys, my guess is no." Ryan put the key in his pocket. "They got two big exhaust ports coming out about ten feet over the door that leads down there. Those ports are for the two generators in the lower basement. When the shore power is pulled, the generators kick on automatically. They're both air-start, five hundred KVAs. They get turned on by a blast of air instead of a starter motor. Between the time the shore power is out and the building goes dark, these things will be up and running in less than six seconds, turning the power back on throughout the building. You gotta take the gennies out first, then go for the shore power. Do it the other way and you're gonna give 'em time to phone out. All the phones in there are on computers. You blow the power and those assholes're gonna have t' shout out the windows to get help."

  Nothing in Ryan's experience prepared him for what he was about to do. He and Lucinda moved around the side of the building, finding a small alley that separated UBC from the Federal Bank building next door. The space between the two huge high-rises was the size of a lane just wide enough to allow service trucks to pull up to the doors. He looked up as he felt the first drops of icy rain hit his neck "It's raining," he said to Lucinda.

  "Probably isn't gonna change much."

  He marveled at Lucinda and her courage. She was right there beside him. If nothing in Ryan's
existence had prepared him for this, he wondered what it must be like for her.

  They found the door John had told them about. Ryan took out the key and stuck it into the lock. It slid in smoothly and turned. Ryan opened the door and, just that easily, he and Lucinda stepped onto the ground-floor service entrance of UBC.

  The stairwell was well lit, the poured concrete walls shiny and smooth, reflecting the banks of humming overhead fluorescent lights. They moved slowly down the wide metal staircase. Ryan felt his leg tightening but he pushed on. John had said that the power room was in the lower basement. They would have to go down a long, lighted corridor, and the double doors at the end of the hall should open with the same key that had let them in from the alley. They could hear constant humming from ten servo-mechanisms, as air conditioners and elevator motors turned on and off, whining to life and then thumping off with pneumatic precision.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Ryan opened the duffel bag. Inside were two blankets and two big battery-powered flashlights and tools to disconnect the main power handles. Ryan checked both flashlights and then, holding one, they moved down the long corridor to the service doors. Ryan slid the key in this lock, and again, it worked.

  The power room occupied almost a quarter of the basement. The west wall was dominated by six huge circuit-breakers, all with large levers with red rubber handles. The two enormous 500-KVA backup generators sat side by side in the center of the room, screened off by a low interior wall so that nothing could fall accidentally into the machinery. Ryan saw that the ceiling was almost thirty feet above them. The basement in this portion of the building was two stories high. For some strange reason, Lucinda laughed. He cocked his head in a silent question.

  "Nerves. Either that, or I'm slipping over the edge."

  He took her hand and squeezed it.

  "Let's get these handles loosened." He handed her two pairs of square-bit, rubber-handled pliers and took two pairs for himself. Then he moved to the first lever, and clamping the teeth of the pliers to each side of the bolt that held the handle, he started to unhook it. The idea was to get all six of the power levers loosened so that they could throw them and shut off the power. Seeing by the flashlights, they would then unscrew the bolts with thei r f ingers, remove the handles, and take them with them when they left, making it impossible for UBC security to turn the power back on.

  It was here that they encountered their first major problem. . All of the bolts had been spot-welded into place.

  Chapter 70

  COUNTER MOVES

  Red Decker was in his chief engineer's office at UBC when Wallace Litman called and told him to go directly to an office in midtown Manhattan. He had packed o ne of the little Sony GPS hand units and a large electroni c s atellite map of New York that gave latitude and longitud e a ccurate to feet and inches. It filled a small suitcase. Th e m ap had been developed by Lojack, a car alarm syste m t hat gave precise electronic locations of stolen cars throug h a radio signal. It would also work for the portable GPS.

  Red found the office in a turn-of-the-century building decorated by ornate columns and pigeon shit. The office he was looking for was on the third floor and the fogged-glass door said DIMARCO AND SON, FREIGHT FORWARDING. He had been told to be there at five P. M. and was right on time. He tried the door and found that it was unlocked, so he moved slowly into the little room.

  "Is'a okay, I'm'a wait for you. . "

  Red spun around and saw Pulacarpo Depaulo leaning back in a swivel chair, a Sony Walkman on his curly, black head. Pulacarpo flashed a broad, white smile across iridescent green lapels.

  "You from'a TV?"

  "Yeah. From UBC. I'm here to help find the stolen equipment," Red said, demonstrating his total lack of understanding of the real mission.

  Pulacarpo pulled the headphones down around his neck and got up. "Everybody, they next door. . " Red Decker followed him down the hall to the rickety lift, which groaned like an old whore as it rattled and lunged down four flights to the underground garage.

  A blue van pulled up and Red was ushered into its plush gray interior. Once inside, he found himself looking into the four faces that C. Wallace Litman had confronted that morning. Two of them sat on jump seats. The other two made room for Red on the back seat. They were all dark-skinned men, with hooded eyes and five o'clock shadows.

  " 'AV sa my cousins." Pulacarpo waved a green-suited arm at his four cugini.

  "Nice to meet you," Decker said.

  They didn't respond.

  `They no speak'a no English just now. 'At'sa my pretty good, in'a school, I'm'a think," Pulacarpo explained, getting the idea across badly.

  They pulled out of the underground garage into the cold, New York twilight. The sun was just going down as they headed across town.

  Everybody wasn't next door as Pulacarpo had said.

  The blue van went east four blocks. It pulled up in front of sixty stories of poured concrete and mirrored glass. The marquee said LINCOLN PLAZA. The building was half owned by the Alo family. Joseph Alo had always liked to put American names on his real estate properties-Lincoln Plaza, Hancock Square-but everybody in New York called it the Pasta Palace because the building housed crooked unions and mob front businesses.

  Red was accompanied by Pulacarpo and his cousins into the elevator and taken to the top floor with such speed that his ears popped. He was led out toward a staircase and eventually found himself on the roof, which was covered with AstroTurf.

  The center of the roof was dominated by a heliport and a gray and red Bell Jet Ranger. Six men were standing in the misty rain on the raised heli-platform, but Red's gaze was drawn to a short, round-faced man with oily hair who stepped forward.

  "You got the doohickey?" Mickey Alo said, not introducing himself.

  "Right here." And Red pulled the small Sony GPS receiver out of his pocket and opened the suitcase with the electronic map.

  "That's it?" Mickey said, surprised at the size of the thing.

  "Yes, sir." Red had a funny feeling about this little round man. Something told him to be respectful.

  "Fucking-A. I thought it was gonna be like some kinda big deal."

  "No, sir, it's very miniaturized."

  "What's your name?"

  "Russ Decker."

  "Decker? Like the chain saw company?"

  "People call me Red."

  "Okay, set up where you want. This okay, up here?"

  "It's great. Good place, no interference. I should be able to receive if they send." Then Red noticed several automatic weapons lying on the seat in the back of the Jet Ranger. Some survival instinct told him he should just keep his mouth shut, get the job done, and go home.

  "Hey, Chain Saw," Mickey said, "You want a special?"

  "No, sir."

  "Nickadoma, give him a meatball special."

  A tall man with broad shoulders handed Red the chunky sandwich.

  "Thank you," Red said, taking it even though he didn't want it. He tuned in the GPS, and wondered what C. Wallace Litman could possibly have in common with this bunch of thugs.

  They found a sledgehammer in a tool cabinet under a workbench. Ryan hefted it. It had a ten-pound head. "What're you gonna do?" Lucinda asked.

  "I don't know, but we gotta stay on schedule. We disable the generators, then we'll turn off the shore power and try to break these handles."

  They both knew that if security guards came down and the handles were still attached, the guards could simply shove them back into place and knock Cole's broadcast off the air. The UBC ten-meter C-band dish on the roof next to their SNG truck was more powerful and could cut right through their transmission. They had to break the handles somehow. Lucinda spotted two carbon dioxide fire extinguishers hanging in brackets near the door.

  "Maybe if we cool them down first, it will make the metal more brittle," she said.

  "Worth a try."

  Ryan looked at the closest generator, the air starter perched on top of the unit like a giant prehistori
c insect. The starter would drive a heavy blast of air down into the motor and turn it on. By blocking the intake, John had said, they could stop the process.

  Ryan climbed up on the generator and looked at the intake. It was about two feet by one. "Gimme a blanket," he said to Lucinda. Ryan took it and jammed it down into the air intake.

  "Get the fire extinguisher." He looked at his watch; they were almost out of time. The network would be in the forty-five seconds of black in under two minutes. "We gotta throw the switches," he said, as he climbed atop the second generator, and stuffed another blanket into the intake.

  He climbed down as Lucinda set the flashlights up, turning them on and pointing them at the circuit breakers in the brightly lit room.

  "Thirty seconds," he said, his voice tight with tension. "Start cooling down the handles."

  Lucinda began to spray the ice-cold carbon dioxide gas from the fire extinguisher onto the handles of the circuit breakers. Ice crystals began to form.

  On the Rim, Steve Israel came out of his office to supervise the changeover from the NFL remote broadcast of the Game of the Week to their regular network programming, The Nightly News with Dale Hellinger.

  Dale was behind the anchor desk, slipping his ear angel in as they were getting set to go into the forty-five seconds of black. The camera operators adjusted their shots.

  Rick Rouchard settled into his director's chair in the control room and pushed the "God button" that let his voice boom out over the set. "Okay, Dale, we're in black in fifteen seconds. Coming out of black in a minute. Everybody stand by, we're fifty-nine, forty-nine to straight-up."

  They all watched the clock in the control room tick down.